This salad has the warm, winter feel of a Christmas salad. In an effort to balance out the sweets of the season, inspired by Moroccan flavors, vitamin-enriched with sweet potatoes, and filled with Mandarin oranges from the front yard tree, this salad is today’s pick for a fresh, December meal. Salud!

A Comfort Food Vignette from Ashley, Meta Street Bungalow

Joon didn’t know how to ride a bike when she arrived at the University. Our apartment was off-campus student housing, connected to our classes by a bike path. She had a bike and taught herself to ride so she could get to class. Joon was not very stable, but she kept with it. For the days she fell and walked her bike home to rest, she had homemade chicken soup for comfort. 🚴

Hua Joon was Korean and also ate tiny dried silvery fish in the way I ate potato chips. Boiling the chicken was an all day event. The chicken would boil on the stove of our tiny apartment for hours while we studied. When it was done, Joon had meals for the week. It was a good strategy, especially on a college student’s budget. The rest of us were taking trips to Costco for giant boxes of Honey Grahams cereal and mega jars of peanut butter and jelly. 🐓

More than twenty years later, I remember Joon’s boiling chicken, late night’s studying, and dented bicycle when I boil whole chickens to make chicken stock and bone broth at home. Once it’s complete, I freeze it in Ball jars and bring one serving size at a time to the fridge. We boost the broth by adding shredded chicken, cooked rice, chopped spinach, carrots, onions, amd baked sweet potatoes, salt and pepper and have it on hand to eat with fresh popovers when someone in the family is feeling under the weather, or following a spill off a bicycle. 🍜

Chicken & Vegetable Soup | Ashley | Meta Street Cafe

Chicken & Vegetable Soup Recipe from Ashley, Meta Street Bungalow

Rinse a whole organic chicken, removing any insides put in the cavity. Fill a large soup pot with clean water. Put the chicken in a collander in the soup pot, submerging it in the water. Get the pot boiling and add a few garlic cloves, carrots, celery, cilantro, and a chopped onion. (I use a large soup pot with a colander insert to make pulling the boiled chicken and vegetables easy to remove from the broth and discard.) Let the chicken boil for an hour or so, until it’s cooked. Using a utensil in each hand, fish out large chunks of meat and set aside. Boil the carcas another couple of hours to get the benefits from boiled bones. When done, turn off the stove and pull the collander with the chicken carcas in it out of the soup pot. Let it cool. This is chicken broth, or chicken stock.

Popovers | Robyn | Plum Cove Cottage

Popovers Recipe from Robyn, Plum Cove Cottage

Popovers are light and easy to make. A few tricks help them to rise.Stick to the recipe. Warm up the pans. Fill 3/4 full only and preheat the oven before putting them in. Then lower after 15 minutes. They will rise to perfection.

Farm Box Smoothie

I just recently got on the morning smoothie train. My dad has been doing it for years. It has been about a week, now, that I have had a smoothie for breakfast each morning and I am pretty sure I won’t go back to my old usual – wheat toast with nut butter & fruit.

I keep a lot of fruits and vegetables in the fridge from our Farm Box delivery and our own garden, so my new morning routine is to dump a bunch of fresh produce in a food processor, add some super foods (nuts, avocados, cinnamon, turmeric, and/or chia seeds), pea protein powder, keifer, & almond milk. I make a large batch and feel like I have a constant source of liquid nutrition all morning. It is fabulous. It’s a great way to intake fresh foods & starting the day that way is really working for me.

Our stepmom has a lot to say about smoothies, too. She is right. We are getting there in our house…

Lynn says, “It’s a great nutritious portable breakfast. I made smoothies for years for my daughter Skylar to have on the way to school. Most kids have their most intense academic classes in the morning: toast is not enough! No wonder there are so many problems in a classroom with kids are being too tired from lack of fuel or hyped from the wrong foods: sugar from pastries, white bread, bagels, etc. Its the parents responsibility to provide young children at least, who cannot choose, a nutritious breakfast and the other meals as well. It’s brain food; and every parent wants their child to do well.”

Farm Box Smoothie Recipe

I use unsweetened almond milk to smooth it out. Trader Joes, Lassens, & Fresh and Easy all carry it. I add a tasteless pea protein powder from Lassens, too. Then, I always put a banana for sweetness and an orange. I always put a cup or so of keifer, too, for the probiotics.

After that, I just start dumping healthy stuff in. Whatever I have. For example, I usually put an avocado, a handful of greens (kale, romaine, bok choy….), apricots, a spoonful of honey & ginger (especially if I have a cold), spoonful of tumeric (for anti-inflamation), strawberries, almonds or cashews. Little of this, little of that. I basically make a giant liquid vitamin.

I fill a large food processor and use a funnel to fill a giant. pink 40 oz. HydroFlask with a cap and big straw. I sip it all morning and I LOVE it. I have a really fast metabolism so my body can handle a lot of calories. You may not want such a giant intake, but on a smaller scale, you could have a nice compact breakfast and start the day with mega foods. It’s so awesome!

Lime Shrimp Quinoa with Cherries

There are a few parts to this recipe that give quinoa good flavor. My husband doesn’t like quinoa, so his response after eating this dish was, “That was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Best quinoa I’ve ever had.”

So, here’s how.

Lime Shrimp Quinoa with Cherries Recipe

Toast the dry quinoa in a skillet for a few minutes. Remove and rinse.

Meanwhile, prep the rest. Dice a handful of spinach, & a pinch of cilantro, squeeze two limes, & have a couple handfuls of shrimp ready. Slice fresh cherries in half and pit them.

Once the quinoa is cooked, mix in the prepped parts until it is all warm together. Enjoy a tasty dish of quinoa in wonder.

Adapted from Eating Well Magazine. Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006

Cupboard Story

This plate was our grandparents’ everyday china. I specifically inherited these dishes (as opposed to the “good china,” when I was living in a van and traveling the western States rock climbing & teaching outdoor education. Who can blame my grandmother? All things pointed to “Won’t be settling down anytime soon.”. These plates remind me of staying the night at their house and waking up to my grandfather squeezing fresh orange juice and putting powdered sugar on donuts from the Downtown Los Angeles Farmer’s Market. I am so grateful to have these dishes, now. 💕

Potato & Spinach Frittata

Using full high quality cheese and full-fat dairy, the frittata is so tasty. It’s really fast to make and easily uses vegetables on hand. This meal will pack well for a picnic, and taste good as cold leftovers.

Potato & Spinach Frittata Recipe

A few helpful tips for making a good frittata is to start with olive oil and butter in a cast iron skillet, then sautee onions and vegetable additions, adding a large pinch of salt. Crack 6 eggs into the mixture, pour in milk, yogurt, or cream, and two handfuls of cheese. Give it a gentle stir and leave it on the stove top for a few minutes until the bottom seems to be solidifying, then put it in the oven until it browns, 10-15 minutes at 350. I gave it a broil blast for five minutes at the end, too. It’s nice to have a browned top and insides that are almost the consistancy of custard.

Spinach & Chickpea Yellow Curry

This meal was so simple to make. I used half a bottle of Trader Joe’s Yellow Curry Sauce because I had it in the cupboard, but I’d like to find some straight curry paste from the Asian American Market down the street, instead. I think the flavor will be more bold and more authentic. However, this did turn out well. It was a fast, fresh meal, and an interesting way to eat chickpeas. I think adding shrimp would enhance it, as well.